Silent? Perhaps.

I have often heard it said that God is silent. That there are times in our lives when we will be desperate to hear His voice, to experience His presence, but He will not speak and will not manifest His presence to us. I have been taught that is anthropocentric and presumptuous to expect that God will speak to us or to expect to meet with Him at any given time. The corollary to this seems to be that humility on my part requires me to be content to know about God and to trust God in these times of silence. When God doesn’t speak, He can still be trusted.

I am sure that this is true. God is trustworthy regardless of my experience. God is the LORD, the creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty God who does whatever He pleases. All true. And yet, He is the self-revealing God. He is the God who seeks relationship. He hearkens unto our cry. He fixes His eye on His children and bends His ear to listen for and to our prayers. He is not mute like the idols, He can and does speak to His children. I don’t think it is presumptuous to expect Him to speak or to be genuinely surprised by His silence… if He is indeed silent.

I cannot speak for others, but I am wondering how often God is truly silent. Is it that He isn’t speaking, or that we are not hearing Him? It maybe that God truly is silent at times, that He may refuse to manifest Himself to His children for reasons that only He fully knows. I do not mean to rule out this possibility, but I am realizing that often He is speaking; my failure to hear Him doesn’t necessarily mean that He is distant or silent.

Recently I have been going through a trial. Not just an inward trial, but also an outward trial, a conflict with another person. I have been asking God to solve this problem, and have been frustrated by His silence. Then, just this morning I realized that God has not been silent or distant. He has been present and speaking. He hasn’t chosen to solve my problem, and so I interpreted His “failure” to solve the problem, or to answer me according to my questions and concerns as silence. In fact, as I reflect on it, God has not only been speaking to me in general about my heart or about other things in my life, but He has even been talking to me about this conflict. I just didn’t like what He had to say, so I wasn’t really paying attention. I was “blowing off” the advice and counsel He was offering because it didn’t fit my paradigm or my desires. None of what I was hearing from Him was helping to solve the problem so I simply paid it no mind.

As I reflect on this I think back to other times in my life, other times where God seemed to be silent. As I do so, I find that He has been consistently speaking to me. God is revealing Himself, is in fact speaking, everyday. He speaks to us through His creation. He speaks to us through His Word. He speaks to us through His people. Sometimes He also meets us during worship, or in dreams, or impresses things upon our hearts or minds directly, whispering to our very souls. So, why do I fail to hear Him? I have already addressed my current malady of simply not wanting to hear what He has to say, but there are other reasons as well.

Sometimes I have failed to hear Him because I have filled up my life with noise and activity. I have “drowned out” the voice of God in my life by keeping myself too busy, and my mind to full of other information, to hear the whisper of His voice. My inner senses have been overwhelmed with input and the cacophony of voices has made it nearly impossible to pick out the voice of my Good Shepherd. Solitude and silence have been the answer for these times. I must take time to still my body and soul, to block out all the other voices, so that I might hear the steady and quiet call of my Lover to come away with Him. My heart is like a pool of water that has been all stirred up and I can’t see clearly through the turbid, silt laden water to see beneath the surface. But, if I wait in stillness the waters calm, the silt settles and I can see with crystal clarity through to the bottom of things.

Sometimes I have failed to hear Him because I have simply not pursued Him. His Word is available to me every day, His “pre-recorded” messages are there for me listen to whenever I would take the time, or make the time, to do so. Often when I do make the time, a miracle happens and the Word comes alive through the agency of the Spirit and these “pre-recorded” words turn out to the very Logos of God alive and active speaking to my very soul. But, if I do not choose to turn my attention to His Word, I miss the opportunity to meet with Him. Sparks do not fly every time I open the Word to seek His voice, but if I never sit down and read I miss the opportunity for the electric chemistry of our meeting. Even when sparks do not fly and the meeting is less electric, opening the Word is like reading old love letters or old correspondence from a friend or mentor and I hear His voice in that way, as an echo, a reminder of the connection that we share, the history of our relationship.

I don’t believe that God is nearly as silent as we sometimes make Him out to be; rather, I believe that I have much to learn about becoming a better listener. I cannot presume to know what He will say, but it is not presumptuous to expect Him so say something.